We are extremely pleased to present the first issue of the INSITE Journal, a new initiative that is conceived as a quarterly online publication that will be a primary component of the new INSITE website.

            This will likely be our first and last appearance in the Journal. Other than this introduction, it is in the more-than-capable conceptual and editorial hands of Andrea Torreblanca, INSITE’s Director of Curatorial Projects. Indeed, we decided to support the Journal as a major undertaking after being convinced by Andrea that something of its nature was necessary if INSITE were to (re)assert the relevance of its past work and develop an instrument for looking toward the future. In turn, we suspect that Performing Resilience, the title Andrea chose for the inaugural issue, is as much a reference to the existence and vitality of INSITE after twenty-eight years, as it is to a necessary tool of survival in the times in which we find ourselves.

            Andrea’s vision for the INSITE Journal includes four online issues each year—commissioning original texts by four writers—two who will be asked to shape their writing around a theme viewed through the lens of past INSITE projects, and two who will be asked to respond to the theme without specific reference to INSITE. Other elements of the Journal will include Documents, a collage of images from two past INSITE projects, and Selections from the Archive, an opportunity to reconsider contributions originally written by participants in INSITE’s public programs. Our plan is to compile, publish, and make available small books with the primary texts from the four editions of each year.

            We are enormously grateful to the team that has made the Journal possible: first, to the authors who generously agreed to create new texts for a publication with no track record; to Cítrico Gráfico for their innovative yet respectful design; to Julie Dunn, our tenacious but gentle copy editor; to Margarita González, the translator and editor who is the final arbiter of all things Spanish for us; to Liz Mason-Dees for her sensitive translations of complex texts from Spanish to English; and last but not least, to Andrea Torreblanca who, through all aspects of INSITE on which she is currently taking the lead, has made this past year a great learning experience and a true pleasure for both of us.